Three years before that, the medical board issued an emergency suspension of Johnson’s license following the death of a woman during a liposuction he was performing.

Cobb’s medical examiner found the cause of death to be lidocaine toxicity, and the medical board subsequently barred Johnson from performing cosmetic surgery. The patient’s family also sued him, but the lawsuit was permanently dismissed in Fulton County court in August 2011.

The indictment alleges that Johnson ran three medical facilities registered in Cobb — Hello Beautiful, Genesis Medical Aesthetics and Royal Advanced Healthcare Centers — using Ulbrich’s name as a cover.

Prosecutors said Johnson would write prescriptions in Ulrich’s name with Ulbrich’s permission.

Sometimes Johnson would do the pre-op work, and Ulbrich would meet the patient for the first time in the operating room, according to the indictment. Ulbrich would then watch Johnson perform surgery, which he was specifically barred from doing after a patient died during one of his previous surgeries.

Ulbrich’s license was suspended in August after failing a polygraph test when asked about “sexual encounters” with patients. He admitted to sexual contact with four former female patients after leaving a rehabilitation program in Kansas. The suspension came three months after his May 2017 arrest.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution reviews of records revealed that it is not unusual for the state medical board to allow doctors with a history of malpractice, patient sex abuse or other violations to return to practice. The doctor-dominated medical board routinely sends errant physicians to classes and therapy programs and then allows them to see patients again.

The AJC recently revisited the investigation only to find that the problems were still pervasive, uncovering 450 cases of doctors who were brought before medical regulators or courts for sexual misconduct or sex crimes in 2016 and 2017 — in nearly half of those cases the doctors remain licensed to practice medicine.

On Monday, Time's Up published an open letter announcing a #MuteRKelly protest. We stand linked with our sisters and will no longer tolerate the predatory behavior of R. Kelly to go unchecked. This is a call to action to #MuteRKelly. His music must be turned down and the voices of these brave survivors must be heard." Jurnee Smollett-Bell